Information Disorder

Much of the discourse on ‘fake news’ conflates three notions: mis-information, disinformation and mal-information. But it’s important to distinguish messages that are true from those that are false, and messages that are created, produced or distributed by “agents” who intend to do harm from those that are not:

● Dis-information. Information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organization or country.

● Mis-information. Information that is false, but not created with the intention of causing harm.

● Mal-information. Information that is based on reality, used to inflict harm on a person, organization or country.